Robots: Emerging Communication

The latest episode of the Robots
podcast takes a closer look at the emergence of communication - and
how it can be studied using robots. The first part features an interview
with Sara Mitri, an interdisciplinary researcher
at Switzerland's EPFL and the University of Lausanne,
Switzerland. Mitri and colleagues have taken an unusual approach to the
problem: Using the ground-based S-Bot robots
(pictured above) as a model for biological organisms, they used
artificial evolution to study complex behaviors like communication. And
as the broad media
coverage of her recent publications in Current
Biology and PNAS show, the
advantages of this approach have not gone unnoticed: While retaining
many of the real-world complexities present in biological systems, the
robotic models allow complete access to all model parameters. And there
is another key advantage: Today very little is known about the evolution
of phenomena like communication, because they leave no trace in the
fossil record. By conducting artificial evolution, this work allowed to
reconstruct part of that missing evolutionary history and shed light on
the origins of communication in all animals, from simple cells to us
humans. In the second part of the podcast, Jürgen
Jost, director of the "Complex Structures in
Biology and Cognition" group at Leipzig's Max Planck Institute discusses
the question of intentionality of robot communication. Tune
in!